Electron microscopes are used in neuroscience, microbiology and materials science for high-resolution imaging and subsequent structural or compositional analysis. In particular, many applications that utilize a scanning electron microscope (SEM) require imaging millimeters or even centimeters of material at nanometer resolutions, leading to semi-autonomous operation of the SEM, weeks of around-the-clock collection time, and vast quantities of data. Scanning probe microscopes are similarly limited.
A traditional SEM operates in raster mode, visiting every “pixel” location in sequence. Many engineering advances have been proposed to increase the speed of raster mode through faster scanning coils, or efficiency gains through image acquisition buffers and communications protocols. Nevertheless, there is a need to provide faster scan times. Advancements that provide speedup in series with any of the aforementioned engineering advances would be particularly beneficial.
Interpolation methods of sampling and imaging, such as bilinear interpolation, are known, but are difficult to apply in high noise environments. A structured sampling methodology, such as interpolation, may also miss details that are regularly structured in a way that avoids recognition of the structure of the sample.